French soldiers stand at a military airbase near Bamako, Mali, on Monday. / Eric Feferberg, AFP/Getty Images

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

A French military assault on jihadist rebels marching south from a desert stronghold in northern Mali cannot be maintained without support from France's NATO allies, including the United States, analysts say.

France launched an operation "they don't have all the resources to carry through to the end," said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa center at the Atlantic Council, a think tank.

The operation required assistance from the United States and other NATO allies before they were ready to provide it, and "I think that's going to make it more difficult going forward," Pham said.

The French have already received drone and other aerial intelligence from the United States. And the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force provided two C-17 transport planes to carry French troops to the Malian capital of Bamako because France lacks heavy-lifting capability, Pham said.

Another analyst, Marina Ottaway of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said France's move was necessary to stop a rebel advance, though an overall strategy for completing the campaign appears to be missing.

"The shortcoming of the French approach is that it's not clear what the next step is," Ottaway said. "They're just going in and stopping the advance of the rebel groups."

France sent around 600 troops to protect French citizens and prop up Malian government forces Friday, while its warplanes pounded jihadist rebels in northern Mali. The rebels countered by seizing a new town.

Islamist extremists overran government forces in Diabaly, a small town in central Mali where fighting in the 4-day-old offensive continues to rage, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defense minister, on Monday told the Associated Press.

The French intervention does not follow the timetable of the United States.

U.S. diplomats have been trying to restore a legitimate democratic government since a military coup in March. The coup was quickly followed by the seizing of a territory the size of Texas in northern Mali by a combination of mostly secular Touareg separatists and Jihadi militias linked to al Qaeda. After the Touareg advance, the Jihadists seized the four major cities in the area and have since destroyed historic shrines and inflicted their extreme interpretation of Islamic law on the populace.

The United States has been trying to assemble an invasion force to retake northern Mali, comprised by neighboring African countries. Those countries, however, have only agreed to contribute 3,300 troops, which Pham said is a "delusional" pittance for the task.

Meanwhile, the Jihadists were marching toward Mali's heavily populated south, in the direction of a landing strip near Mopti, which African nations involved in surveillance flights over northern Mali use for refueling.

Ottaway said the United States was moving "far too slowly," for what was becoming "an imminent crisis."

With jihadists moving toward more populated country, there was a danger of losing more of Mali, and of the jihadist rebellion spreading to other countries in Saharan fringe area known as the Sahel, Ottaway said.

"If jihadi groups are not stopped, they will form a larger and larger base of operation in the Sahel and will become more and more difficult to dislodge," she said.

Pham said he believes that scenario is unlikely. The highest estimates for the north Mali jihadists, around 2,000, is far below what could threaten the much more populous southern part of the country, Pham said. Besides, he said, the French solution is counterproductive because it does not rely on local forces.

The French may have enough troops to push back the latest Islamist incursion, but not enough to defeat and uproot the radicals in the north, Pham said.

For that they will need help, and, "by planting their flag there, it's now become the latest place to go if you want to fight a Western army," he said.